Monstrous Compendium Vol. 1: Spelljammer Creatures
Frozen Sick
D&D Beyond Basic Rules
Basic Rules (2014)
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Monstrous Compendium Vol. 1: Spelljammer CreaturesFrozen SickD&D Beyond Basic RulesBasic Rules (2014)Sign in to view your library & saved favorites.
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2024 rules for hide say an enemy has to roll a dc 15 stealth check and that enemy is then hidden until someone "finds" them. If you are on the same battlefield, can you rely on your pasive perception to prevent thr enemy from being hidden? Does the enemy attampting to hide have to beat a dc 15 AND passive perceptions of all enemies in the area?
I assume thats the case, but someone very forcefully said passive perception is only available when the dm wants to use it. I assume to do things like ambush the players with out asking for a perception check.
No one knows, my friend. No one knows.
But I bet you will get some very confident answers on both sides.
I'm not an expert on the 2024 rules, but isn't it that to successfully hide you MUST get at least a 15 on your hide check, and then whatever number you actually rolled (15, 18, 35, etc) is what is used against Passive Perception and active Search checks?
I was under the impression that you could not successfully hide with a 14, even if the enemy's passive perception was a 12. You need a minimum of 15 to hide, then their perception and Search checks are compared to the actual number you rolled.
Or am I way off?
The rules are clear, you have to stealth check get a 15 or higher, as a minimum to hide.
The question is, if you stealth check and roll a 16, but there is an enemy nearby with a passive perception of 20, does your stealth check fail because Pasive Perception is an "always on" sort of thing?
I get the strong impression that most people think passive perception is always on. But the rules are so ambiguous that im just asking...
Honestly, the 2024 perception rules are enough of a disaster that I mostly don't care what they say, but other than legacy from 2014 there's no real reason to think it serves as an effective target number for stealth in 2024.
Yes, this is correct. The DC 15 success allows you to Hide, but also you "stop being hidden immediately" if an enemy finds you. Passive Perception is one way that this can occur since passive perception "is a score that reflects a creature’s general awareness of its surroundings. The DM uses this score when determining whether a creature notices something without consciously making a Wisdom (Perception) check."
It's interesting to note that this word "notice" is actually used pretty consistently by the authors for all of the related mechanics:
Wisdom: "notice things in the environment . . ."
Perception: "notice something that's easy to miss"
Stealth: "escape notice"
Some equipment can help someone to "perceive things they wouldn't otherwise notice"
"Some adventuring tasks—such as noticing danger . . . are affected by sight . . . "
From the DMG:
If we go back to the 2014 rules, there were some rules regarding exploration (but not combat) which explicitly made some exceptions to the "always on" nature of Passive Perception. While exploring, characters were meant to declare their "activity while traveling". The main recommended activity -- the default -- was called "noticing threats". This basically "turned on" your passive perception while traveling which was explicitly used to see if anyone "notices a hidden threat". Similar language was also used to adjudicate Surprise during combat. But the point is, there were also other activities that you could engage while traveling which would essentially "turn off" your Passive Perception -- these included "navigate", "draw a map", "tracking", "foraging". At that time, it wasn't fully clear whether or not an activity such as "looking out for traps" was included within the "noticing threats" activity or if that was a separate activity.
Pretty much all of the above mechanics were eliminated from the 2024 rules, leaving us with a Passive Perception ability that is just "always on". The only potentially explicit exception to this which has survived the migration to the 2024 rules are when the DM determines that Marching Order is important: "A marching order makes it easier to determine which characters are affected by traps, which ones can spot hidden enemies, and which ones are the closest to those enemies if a fight breaks out." But again, this would be more of an exploration rule which might affect something like combat Surprise, but it's really not a "during combat" rule.
This is an unfortunate misconception that stems from misinterpreting some of the explanations that are given in the DMG:
In this text, the first paragraph is comparing against the other situation where neither side is trying to be stealthy which results in creatures that "automatically notice each other". In contrast, when a creature is hidden, it's never trivial to notice them -- it requires some decent perception. But it's never impossible either -- with good enough perception they can be noticed. Now, it turns out that that paragraph is actually incorrectly written -- a character can never "try" an ability check. To "try" to notice a hidden creature, what the character CAN do is to perform a Search action. Then, if necessary, the DM will ask for the Perception check in order to adjudicate the result of that action.
The second paragraph is basically saying that sometimes the character isn't actually searching for anything. You don't ask for an active roll in that case because the active roll is for when they actively search. Instead, use the Passive Perception score to see if the character notices the thing in question without actively searching for it. Sure, it could have been written better just like the first paragraph could have been written better. But that's what is going on there.
These rules are NOT saying that the DM has the option to use these rules if he feels like it. Well, that's always true of course but then we aren't talking about RAW at that point.
Keep in mind that all ability checks in the game (active and passive) are asked for by the DM. The player does not ask to make a check. The player describes their action, and the DM might ask for a check to help adjudicate the result of that action. This goes for both active and passive checks. This does NOT mean that a DM can ignore passive checks if he feels like it. It's part of the mechanics for running the game. (Particularly for Passive Perception which is a core mechanic that is included in every monster stat block in the game. The DMG does imply that using other passive checks are very situational and somewhat optional.) When the player declares an action for his character that has an unknown consequence, the DM asks for an active check. If the player's character passively / unknowingly enters a situation that has an unknown consequence, the DM uses passive checks which don't require the player to do anything. This gameplay rhythm and mechanic is reinforced all over the place in the rule books.
How I run it yes. How the rules seem to be phrased, no. I do not think its really clear either way, just RAW wise it leans more towards no imo.
There is some logic to it as without a special feature you have to use an action to hide so requiring an action to find seems a fair counter. But I find the 2024 rules clumsier than the 2014 rules so i pretty much just use those. They were not perfect but they were more functional.